Voting machines are well known, and have been in use for over a century in the United States. Such machines are intended to speed the vote counting process and to eliminate a variety of problems inherent in voting by paper ballot. For all but the smallest of elections and/or ballot initiatives, the process of collecting, counting and tabulating paper ballots has proven to be tedious, time-consuming, error-prone and subject to a variety of tampering schemes. The use of voting machines has helped to speed the process of vote counting, but these machines often suffer from a variety of shortcomings. For example, simple mechanical lever voting machines of various types have been in use in parts of the United States since 1892. Voters pull levers corresponding to the candidates for whom they wish to cast a vote. In a typical machine of this type, the voter can pull levers, view the levers to consider the choices he/she has made, and make changes to those choices until he/she finalizes his/her vote by pulling a special lever that simultaneously enters the voter's selections into the machine's totals and moves all of the voting levers back into their unselected position. Pulling the special lever causes counter wheels inside the machine to rotate, adding the voter's selections to selections already made by other voters. At the end of an election, election officials open up each voting machine to read the totals from the counter wheels and determine how many votes were cast for each candidate. By the 1960s, about half of all votes in the United States were cast on such mechanical voting machines. These machines were appealing to election officials and voters alike because they allowed election results to be determined quickly, and because they were able to thwart voting fraud schemes that had become widespread using paper ballots.
However, most voting machines—from the earliest mechanical machines to the latest, high-tech electronic voting machines suffer from any of a variety of shortcomings. One of the main disadvantages of the simple lever machines is that they maintain no record of the individual votes cast—they store only totals on a per-candidate basis. As a result, it is not possible to audit them or to “recount” individual ballots. If the machine malfunctions and a counter wheel fails to record totals properly, there is no record from which a corrected tally can be determined. Lever machines do not completely eliminate election fraud, either. Occasionally, levers are mislabeled (either accidentally or deliberately). Because of their size and weight, these machines are expensive to store and transport. Despite the fact that lever machines were still in use in some 15% of all counties in the US, these machines are no longer manufactured, making it difficult or impossible to obtain spare parts.
Devices for electronic voting and/or electronic vote counting are well known, and have featured prominently in recent state and national elections. Some examples are optically scanned paper ballots, machine-read punched cards and direct-recording electronic devices. Each type has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Perhaps the most infamous of these voting systems is the electronically-counted punched card system used in many states in the 2000 Presidential election—perhaps most notably in Florida. Incomplete punching left many cards only “dimpled” or partially perforated, and a variety of other problems resulted in many complaints of improperly recorded vote totals. Because these punched cards were counted by electronic means (typically by optical scanning or by sense wires in punched-card readers), improperly or partially perforated cards could register incorrectly. Although the absolute numbers of ballots in question was relatively small, their significance was greatly magnified due to the closeness of the election.
Optically scanned (mark-sense) ballots, similar to those used in college entrance exams (SAT, LSAT, MCAT, etc.) tend to be less problematic, but are still capable of misregistering votes, especially when a vote is changed by erasure. They are also highly vulnerable to tampering.
Some of the biggest concerns associated with electronic voting (and automated voting systems in general) are as follows.
Physical security: Electronic voting machines are relatively small and easy to transport. While this may represent a significant cost savings to local election authorities, the portability of such devices makes them relatively easy to steal and manipulate.
Vote Tampering: Tampering with votes is one of the greatest concerns to election officials and voters alike. Although actual incidents of vote tampering may be relatively rare, the implications of successful vote tampering are enormous, especially if the practice becomes widespread.
Unauthorized Voters: When votes from unauthorized voters are successfully recorded, the impact is not unlike that of vote tampering, where the outcome of an election can be affected.
Multiple Votes: Another concern in election systems is the prevention of multiple votes by the same individual. If such a practice is ignored and becomes widespread, the outcomes of elections can be affected.
Overvotes/Undervotes (intentional or unintentional): An “overvote” occurs when a voter casts a vote for more candidate than he/she is permitted. An “undervote” occurs when a voter fails to enter a selection where one is permitted/expected. Most fully-automated electronic voting systems are programmed to notify the voter that an undervote or overvote has occurred and will not permit the vote to be entered until the problem is corrected. Occasionally, however, programming errors occur and overvotes/undervotes are recorded, possibly misrepresenting the voter's intention. On paper ballot systems, an improperly filled out from may cause the ballot counting device (e.g., optical scanning system) to reject the ballot, effectively negating that ballot. Even worse, a programming error could cause valid ballots to be rejected while improperly filled-out ballots are recorded. Although rare, such situations have occurred in the past.
“Escrow” votes: A relatively new concept is a situation where one or more ballots are held in “escrow” while the eligibility of a certain category of voters is contested. In at least one recent case, such voters were allowed to cast their ballots, but their votes were withheld from the vote totals until the eligibility issue was resolved.
Access to voter information: In the US and in most countries, voting is by secret ballot. This is because of concern over the possibility of coercion of voters or “sale” of votes. In a secret ballot, there is no way to know how any one voter cast his/her ballot, frustrating coercion and leaving voters with no record of their ballot to exchange for payment.
Interpretation Problems: On some ballots, there are rules as to how the ballot is to be cast. For example, in some elections there are multiple seats available, with more candidates to select from than there are seats. The rules of the election may permit voters to select only a specific number of candidates. Depending upon the complexity of the rules and the clarity of the voter instructions, such ballot choices can be confusing, leading to significant questions of interpretation when tallying vote totals.
Audit Trail: Many states require a “recount” in the event of a close vote. However, some voting systems (e.g., the well known lever system) provide no effective means for recounting, because there is no audit trail of individual votes from which to reconstruct the vote totals. However, there is great concern over the nature of the audit trail information. If a ballot is traceable back to an individual voter, then ballot secrecy is destroyed. Audit trail systems must be carefully constructed to reproduce the individual voter's selections without directly identifying the voter.
In fully electronic systems, the validity of an electronically recorded audit trail is the subject of considerable debate, since the recording media can be altered and in the event of a voting system failure, there may be no way to guarantee the integrity of the electronic audit record. Unless a system can be demonstrated to provide a virtually flawless audit record (even in the event of a system failure), lack of confidence in the validity of audit trail information can render such a system useless.
One of the biggest problems with electronic voting systems is their dependence upon conventional electronic recording media. While strong encryption mechanisms may be able to prevent “snooping” and may effectively control access to election data, it may not be possible to prevent damage to the vote recording media and/or audit record. In response to this, some electronic voting systems provide an option for a paper record of each ballot cast. Presumably, this addresses some of the audit trail concerns, but implementation of this scheme requires election officials to maintain two complete sets of records: one on paper and one on electronic media. In the event of a discrepancy, it is difficult to determine which record is correct. Further, the possibility of destruction, loss or defacing of the paper record raises many of the old concerns about paper ballot tampering.